Can't get to 4 hours

[*Jo*]

Occasionally we will have a day where he will feed at four hours but it's a struggle. Asher is 5.5 months old and still asking for a bottle at roughly 3.5 hours and most of the time he will finish it. Of I try to push him out I have a miserable crying baby. Soon as I feed him he's a different kid, very happy... Should I leave it like this? Is this normal?

[ZacsMumme]

Is he on solids?

[*Jo*]

No, I'm going to do blw and have given him a few pieces of food, he grabs it and puts it near his mouth and sometimes gets it in but nothing really stays or goes down so I figured he's not ready. MIL gave him some pear sauce the other day and he spent the next hour bringing it back up, she gave him maybe 5 teaspoon...

[ZacsMumme]

I just wonder if he is hungry? I know solids can either be great or awful for fluxers. I had one of each but if he was to have some you would want it to be quite thick to stay down. Something like pumpkin may be better than pear.

What formula is he on or are you Bf? How big is the bottles he is having?

[*Jo*]

He's on nurture regular (finally a baby that's not dairy intolerant yahoo!) and he has about 220mls. Almost always finishes them to the end, I have dr brown bottles and so I can't make it any bigger than 250mls as that's as large as it goes but he's never polished off the 250mls even when I did make that much. He only wakes for one feed in the night and most of the time leaves some in the bottle.
Pumpkin hmmm.. He doesn't like batman as I've tried him on that, he pushed it back out of his mouth and screwed up his face, wouldn't that be the same sort of thickness?
I've thought of adding something to his bottle to fill him up more but I really don't wanna mess with his tummy

[ZacsMumme]

Yeah I'd steer clear of adding cereal in the bottle. It can dehydrate too.
What about a hungry baby formula? He does sound hungry though if he is draining full bottles before 4 hrly. You may have to just leave as is till he's on solids

Batman?

[okinawamama]

I too would steer clear of cereal in a bottle. If you genuinely think he's hungry, than I would feed formula, not solids. Like BLW suggests, table food is purely for practice, not much nutrition or calories. An entire jar of baby food is usually only 20 calories, so while he may *feel* full, he'll expend 20 calories quickly and not really get a whole lot of nutrition from it.

 There is a guidline I found The Super Babyfood book,  that I kind of had in the back of my mind when feeding my kids. I'd never use this as a hard and fast rule, but it's just something that kind of gave me an idea of how much my little guy should be getting in a 24hour period. The book says a 6-9 month old baby should be getting 50 calories for each pound of weight and Formula contains about 20 calories per ounce. Ultimately, I tried to just watch my little guy. In my total non expert opinion, I think the fact that Asher shows hungry signs before he eats, and is happy/satisfied  afterwards, would say that you're on the right track and for now, just follow his lead.

[*Jo*]

Grrr well he had a bottle at 6pm and then slept til 4.15am, didn't take a full bottle, only about 180mls maybe, then the 7am feed he did the same and it's 8am now and he's screaming for food.... Sigh, better give him a bottle then